


✔️✖️✖️

by cookingwithcyanide



Category: Original Work
Genre: ANARCHY!, Autistic Character, Eventual violence, F/F, F/M, I DONT MAKE THE RULES, M/M, Mentally Ill Characters, My First Work, Nonbinary Character, Queer Characters, Trans Character, dumb kissing scenes, dystopian setting, everyone is qpoc, ftm character, get your popcorn folks, itll be great, its gonna be a wild ride, its vaguely steampunk, poc characters, probably nothing else, romance!, steampunk architecture, the architecture is at least, tragedy!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 14:50:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5789512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookingwithcyanide/pseuds/cookingwithcyanide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mickey was just walking by. Honest! He was a victim of circumstance, and whatever happened afterwards? Wasn’t his fault. He was just 17; if he stumbled across something he wasn’t supposed to, do you really think that a 17 year old boy would be able to walk away? He certainly wouldn’t be caught dead leaving his best friend out of the mix.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Our story opens on a young girl reading in a cluttered room. The door is flung open...

**Author's Note:**

> This piece has been around for a while now, rewritten in notebook after notebook, and I'm excited to finally be posting it somewhere where it can be seen by more than just my lunch table! It's one of my favorite projects.  
> For the record, I am whiter than freshly fallen snow, so while my descriptions of asthma and rooftop study sessions may be okay, Tumblr can only help so much when it comes to writing POCs. If anything comes across as racist, or you have any other problems with it, please tell me, because I'll want to fix it as soon as possible. Thanks for the help!

Mickey was just walking by. Honest! He was a victim of circumstance, and whatever happened afterwards? Wasn’t his fault. He was just 17; if he stumbled across something he wasn’t supposed to, do you really think that a 17 year old boy would be able to walk away? He certainly wouldn’t be caught dead leaving his best friend out of the mix. 

At least he tried to keep me out of it, I guess. He just didn’t do a very good job. But I suppose these things happen when you’re best friends with the actual human disaster that was Mickey Golding. 

And so it began, on that shittyass yet fateful day, when Mickey flung open the front door with all of the grace of a howler monkey on roller skates. Having the psychic powers that come from being close to someone for as long as we have, it wasn’t hard to tell that Mickey had news from the moment he breezed in. In fact, the chair probably could have told that he had news. He’s an expressive boy. 

To be exact, Mickey’s expression was stretched into a grin as wide and blindingly white as the sun. “You’ll never guess what just happened.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You got a date to prom?” He huffed- Mickey hates school functions- and bounced on the balls of his feet. 

“You know I’m not going to prom, Verde. Anyways, this is about something important.” He accompanied this with a crossing of arms that I’m sure was meant to be condescending. 

“Don’t call me that. It’s a stupid nickname.”

“Whatever, Verde. Meet me on the roof in ten.” He turned to flounce out of the room. “I’ll tell you there.”

The foster home Mickey and I live in resides in the top three floors of an apartment building. Nobody’s allowed to go on the roof, due to the fact that there are loose shingles, and a fall would mean plummeting fourteen stories to the asphalt below. However, both of us can get there if we climb out of our respective windows, and it’s the only place to get any privacy in the Home. That is, unless you want to lock yourself in a bathroom. You can’t hold a decent conversation that way, and you’re likely to make someone or other mad. So the roof it was. 

I marked my place in the book I was reading and went to follow Mickey up the stairs. Rooms in the Home are divided by age. Kids five or younger are on the bottom, with Ma and the living room. The dining room and kitchen are on the next floor with anyone aged six to twelve. Anyone older stays on the top floor, with the decided luxury of having two bathrooms, instead of just one. Boys and girls room separately, and with those within a year or two of them. I have one roommate, but she was still at school. 

Upon arrival, I immediately slumped face-first onto my comforter. Such is tradition. After a few minutes, I rolled onto the floor with a thump and a slightly winded “Eugh.”

Just then, a hollow bang sounded from the room’s one dusty window, which startled me into sitting up far too quickly and cracking my head on the steel bedframe. I swore loudly, much to the window’s apparent amusement. 

“Jeez Verde, I can’t leave you alone for five minutes. Hurry up, would you? I’ve been waiting ages already.”

Slower this time, rubbing the bump already rising on my head, I sat up. Mickey was sitting on my windowsill, silhouetted by the low-hanging sun. 

“It’s one or the other, Micks. Can’t be both.” It would probably be a bad idea to push him out the window. Rude, at the very least. 

Mature adult that he is, Mickey stuck out his tongue at me. “Okay shut up. Don’t use your dumb logic here, just get your butt up to the roof. You have work to do.” Before he’d even finished speaking, his gasmask was pulled over his face and he was halfway out of the window. 

Sighing over a chuckle, I grabbed my own mask and crawled out after him, hoisting myself up to the roof by the gutter. Ever-impatient, Mickey was sitting on the edge of one of the chimneys, tapping his boot on the sooty shingles. He coughed; the coal-smeared air was harsher on his lungs than most. I sat at his restless feet and looked up at him. 

“So? What’s this big news you had to get me alone for?” I had an idea, but I couldn’t be sure. 

Instead of an answer, Mickey gave me a look somewhere between petulant and withering. “First, school. I wasn’t kidding when I said you had work.”

“Aw, come on. Can’t I get the day off? You said this was important.”

“So is your education.” He procured a fat folder from his backpack and dropped it in my lap. “Finish your chem and French, and I’ll tell you. Otherwise you’d avoid it all night.” 

The enthusiastic Mr. Golding got his teaching job when I dropped out of school a few years ago years ago. Ma was furious, until Mickey promised to tutor me every day. Thanks to him, I’ve actually excelled in my academic pursuits. At least, that’s what we keep telling Ma so that she doesn’t re-enroll me. Either way, I’m nearly at his level now, and he started taking college courses when he was 14. 

That being said, it obviously took me ages to muddle through it. At least I didn’t have to wait long before Mickey, being the human equivalent of a labrador puppy, cracked and began telling his story anyways. 

“So I was walking home, right? And I take Main for a while, right past City Hall” I hummed and scratched out an answer. “So that was normal, except there were these guys on the steps, same spot as last time.”

My head shot up so fast that I smacked it on the chimney. “Augh- fuck! I mean, what? Were they the same ones?”

A few months ago, Mickey had overheard a pair of City Officials on a smoke break, arguing over some bill that had been vetoed. This wouldn’t have been a strange sight, if it wasn’t for the fact that the bill they had vetoed was going to introduce electricity to all major urban areas. 

“No. They were different, three men this time. Thing is, it was the same thing that they were fighting about before. It sounded like the exact same bill.”

“Why would they veto it a second time? That thing would have been a godsend.”

“The words being used were ‘expenses’ and ‘anarchy.’ One guy was getting all hot and bothered about it because his husband has asthma.” He absentmindedly brought a hand up to rub at his chest. 

From what I understand, asthma didn’t used to be such a big deal. There was good medicine for it, and it would only flare up when irritated. Then, after enormous veins of coal were found in America, and thousands of gallons of gasoline were drilled out of Alaska, power plants and factories were vomiting out thick black smoke for years. Nowadays, even the healthiest of people have trouble breathing outside for long. But people with lung problems- people like Mickey- could practically choke to death in their own backyards. According to a Cambridge study, only one in three people with respiratory health problems makes it past 50, and more and more children are born with them every year. Stopping relying on coal would be the easiest remedy, but it's cheap and ready, so laws requiring everyone to have air filters and gas masks were passed, and things continued. 

“Same old, same old then? I guess anarchy is a new one, though. Wonder why we haven’t heard about that.”

Mickey grimaced. “It’s probably being hushed up. And from what I heard, this isn’t just the second time something like this has come up. Keeps getting shut down though.”

“That’s messed up,” I grumbled, shoving the completed papers back into Mickey’s bag. “That’s really messed up.”

“I know,” he rattled a sight through his mask. “But look on the bright side, Verde!” He slid down the side of the chimney and flung an arm around my shoulders, “If we hurry back in, we probably won’t even be late for dinner!”

“Fat chance. And for the last time, don’t call me that!” I shrugged off his arm and began the treacherous crawl down to the gutter. Just as I swung down to my windowsill, the window was open hard enough to rattle, nearly knocking me to an early grave. Even more frightening, Ma’s ruddy red face was glaring out. 

“Where have you been!””

There are few things in this world as terrifying as a plump little woman with rage in her eyes and a wooden spoon in hand. I started spinning excuses at a million miles an hour. “I was just studying! It was hard to concentrate so I went outside for some quiet, I’m so sorry I lost track of time-”

“You better not have been up there with Mickey! I swear, I’m going to skin that boy alive. Do you have any idea what time it is?”

I edged my way back to the gutter. “Um… No?” 

“EIGHT!” she shrieked, spittle flying from her lips. “EIGHT O’CLOCK! You don’t show up for dinner, what am I supposed to think? You’ve been abducted? You’ve run away? You had better get in here this instant, or God help me-” She made to grab me by the shirtfront, but I was already scrambling back up to the roof. 

“ABORT! ABORT!” I screamed. On the other side of the roof’s peak, I could hear Mickey mirroring me, letting loose an impressive string of curses in his native Hindi. I reached the chimney a moment before he did. 

“Well,” I panted, “shit.”

Mickey burst into laughter, choking and coughing but absolutely hysterical. 

“Oh shut up, would you? What are we supposed to do now?”

In a herculean effort, the teary-eyed boy composed himself long enough to look at me with an expression resembling solemnity. “Sleepover.”

With that, he was off again, until a coughing fit eventually stopped him. I was surprised he didn’t hack up a lung; he had taken off his mask for some idiotic reason and we couldn’t risk going to his room to retrieve it. 

“Ew, no Micks. You snore.”

“I do not!” Mickey managed to look affronted even as he stuck his tongue out at me. 

“We shared a room until we were twelve, Mickey. You snore.”

He probably would have continued petulantly defending his honor if it weren’t for another coughing fit, this one bad enough to rock him back and forth in time to his wheezes. With a soothing hand on his back and a frown, I tugged off my gas mask. 

“And you’re wearing my mask, even though you obviously have a deathwish.”

When the coughs had subsided, Mickey scowled. “I don’t have a deathwish. I just didn’t have time to grab it again once we had to. Y’know. Evacuate the premises.”

“Yeah, well you still have to wear it.” I half-strangled him putting it on, only partially on accident. “You’re going to die.”

“No, not quite yet.” His eyes crinkled in a wry smile. “We’re both going to be sick as dogs if we stay put here all night, though. A close second, ‘specially with you being all naked and stuff.” He poked my cheek and I swatted his hand away. 

“I’m not naked, jackass. And besides, you’ll get out of school free.”

“Yeah, but I’ll be sick.”

“So will I.” I bumped shoulders with him. “You can’t leave me home alone while I’m sick, that’s treason.”

A long suffering sigh came from my left, but Mickey put his arm back around my shoulders. “Whatever.”


	2. Having fucked up gloriously with their foster mother, our protagonists must take their medicine. But what's this?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's short and mostly composed of queer teens being lame and cute but: the action is coming. I'm sure you're on the edge of your seats, naturally. 
> 
> Points to anyone who can guess the ethnicities and genders of all the characters that I'm so clumsily alluding to. More to come soon! Prepare to cringe sympathetically at the white kid who's trying really hard and still failing.

I woke up because it was raining. Drizzling, really, but with the promise that it could get a lot worse. Confused, I sat up. Why was I outside? Rubbing my gritty eyes- earning a sharp stab of pain from my back- I tried to piece together what was going on. 

“Oh.” It was barely a croak. I fell back against the chimney, which, for some reason unfathomable to my sleep-foggy mind, was soft and wheezing. 

Now, it’s pretty general knowledge that soft, wheezy things tend to respond to a sharp kick to the shin. The chimney yelped, and began coughing. 

“Good morning to you, too,” it- Mickey, I now realized- grumbled scratchily. 

“It’s raining.”

Mickey nodded behind me, the bottom of his borrowed mask clunking softly on the top of my head. “That it is, Verde.”

“We should go inside.” Staying outside in the rain was dangerous, what with the toxicity of the atmosphere. 

“I don’t wanna climb all the way down to my window,” he mumbled, wrapping his arms around my waist to hold me in place. “‘M too tired.”

Mickey was something of a heavy-limbed teddy bear when he’d just woken up, and I didn’t doubt that he would stay on the roof for hours if I let him. I wormed my way out of his arms and started my cautious crawl down the wet slope. “Lucky you, we can go in mine.” 

For someone who was allegedly too tired to slide 15 feet down a rooftop, Mickey moved surprisingly quickly as he flew to the gutter and grinned lecherously at me, perching like a copper gargoyle.

“Ooh, and risk getting in even more trouble with Ma? You know the rules.” He adopted a singsong tone, “Boys and girls over the age of ten are not permitted to enter each others’ rooms under any circumstances.”

With a roll of my eyes, I swung down to my windowsill. “Oh, come on Micks. We used to be roommates for crying out loud.”

“Yeah,” Mickey kicked his feet impatiently as I fiddled with the lock on the window. “But now we're boys and girls.”

“Whatever. Ma’ll be at work already, anyways. It’s not like we can get into any more trouble.”

Running a foster home doesn’t pay very well so Ma takes advantage of the fact that that all of her charges are either in school or old enough to take care of themselves to work at the local hospital as a nurse during the day. 

“Yeah, alright. I get to shower first though.” Mickey practically shoved me through the window before it was even properly open and tumbled in after me, landing in a heap on my bed. My gas mask was thrown on the floor and he was out the door in a flash. 

“You’d better leave some hot water for me! You’re in there for more than ten minutes and I’m coming to get you!” The walls in the Home were paper-thin, and I could hear him grate out a laugh in the other room. 

The faucet was turned on as he shouted, “Feel free!” back. 

Asshole. 

It took the two of us over an hour to get cleaned up and fed. In that time, we managed to use up all of the hot water, eat enough cereal to disrupt the wheat industry, and then use some of the remaining cold water to make coffee. Considering how strictly water was rationed, there wouldn’t be many happy faces at dinner. Or clean ones, for that matter. 

The good news was that Mickey wasn’t coughing up black slime, which had been known to happen on particularly bad days, so his lungs couldn’t have been too jacked up from our little campout. We were both croaking like bullfrogs, but that was to be expected. If there had been anything worse, we would probably have to get Mickey to the hospital and risk running into Ma- which neither one of us wanted to do. Such an encounter would feel a lot like wearing red to a bull’s paddock.

•• •• ••

Prolonging the inevitable worked about as well as I had hoped; Ma had spent the day at work fuming and stewing, and by the time she got home she was about ready to snap. She really cared for every child she took in, but a lot of us could be pretty terrible once in awhile. 

Needless to say, the first thing she did upon arrival was ground us. The main clause of this was that we weren’t allowed on the roof even more than we normally weren’t allowed on the roof. Threats of serious asswhoopings if she caught us and the like, the whole nine yards. 

It was particularly devastating because it meant that we had to do tutoring in the family room, surrounded by all of the little kids as they whooped and hollered and generally made a ruckus. I’d never realized just how loud it could get before. 

“I bet it never takes you this long to do your stuff at school. What time do you get out, anyways?” It was six o’clock and we had been at it for ages. 

“About two,” he replied offhandedly. 

But that didn’t make sense. “Mickey, you don’t get home until half past three. Your school is only a fifteen minute walk from here.”

Just then, there was a brisk knock at the door. As Ma navigated her way through the minefield of Legos scattered on the floor, Mickey turned to me, tugging his hair in a strangely nervous gesture. 

“Well, funny story, that. I’ve been meaning to tell you-”

“Is there a Mickey Golding here?”

There was a police officer at the door. 

Mickey cursed.


	3. Something, certainly, has gone terribly amiss. What will become of our dear protagonists?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another painfully short chapter. My cliffhanger needed to remain suspenseful! Don't worry, the next one is more than four times as long. Things are picking up. And guess who figured out how to use rich text!
> 
> I'm going to start trying to space these out a bit more, with a few days between updates, so that if I hit a wall with my writing there'll be some buffer so that updates can keep coming.

The next few minutes were a blur. Mickey grabbed my hand, dragged me so quickly up the stairs that I feared for the state of my shoulder, and shouted something barely coherent about packing light.

I’d just had time to throw a change of clothes and my medicine into my years-old, years-empty backpack when he barged into the room, locking the door and barricading it with my roommate’s mattress. He had pulled his gas mask over his face, and he had his bag slung over his shoulder. There were shouts from the hall.

“C’mon Verde, we gotta go!” He slung my own mask at me from where it had been abandoned on the floor and fought the window open, scrambling up to the roof faster than was necessarily safe. I followed him, jamming the glass shut behind me- never had I thought that I would be thankful for the sticky lock.

“Mickey, what the _hell_  is going on?!” I was moving on blind trust of him, but that could only stretch so far.

Mickey didn’t answer, just grabbed my hand and edged over the peak of the roof, putting as much distance between us and my window as he could. “Look Verde, I’m really sorry that you had to get dragged into this. I _swear_  I’ll get you an explanation, just as soon as we’re-”

The window crashed open before he could finish- the policeman had gotten through. Startled, Mickey stumbled an inch closer to the edge, still gripping my arm. I hissed through my teeth- it was a long way down.

“Verde. We’re going to have to jump,” he called over the wind.

I wrenched my arm out of his grasp. “Are you crazy? We’re fourteen stories up! That’s suicide!”

From the sounds coming from behind us, the officer, hidden by the peak of the roof, had managed to hoist himself halfway onto the gutter. One bad handhold, and he wouldn’t be a problem anymore, but it didn’t look like Mickey was prepared to take that chance. He pulled his mask down to hang around his neck as another gust of wind whipped around us, taunting us even closer to the edge. There was something like pain etched on his face and he said something that looked like “I’m sorry,” but I couldn’t hear a thing. Even the bitter wind seemed to hold its breath as the policeman policeman finally came into our periphery. He was drawing his gun. Mickey wrapped his arms tightly around me, and I felt him take a deep breath.

“Fuck you,” I whispered into his shoulder.

He jumped.


	4. Has something gone terribly wrong? Will our protagonists meet their cruel fate so soon? Who knows what's through the window.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's long. You're welcome. Finally, more queers! More POC! More neurodivergent characters! I expect favorites for possible future pairings in the comments. You might get lucky. Probably all of you- I'm a versatile guy.

I think I screamed. I probably did. We fell for only a few seconds, but it felt like hours. Falling for hours with my face buried in Mickey’s neck, before landing roughly in… A net? It felt like rope, at least. From my general knowledge of cartoons, being caught in a net and pulled through a window was not typically something good, but to be honest, almost anything was better than smashing into a pancake on the pavement far below.

We landed with a (slightly) less painful thump on the scraggly carpet just inside the window. I rolled off of Mickey’s chest and waited for the ringing in my ears to fade. Somebody reached out a hand to help Mickey up; I was left on the ground for the moment.

“Nice catch, Altsoba.”

“Hmm. Who would’ve thought that these skinny little alleys would ever be a service to anyone?” Someone, presumably Judith, was leaning out the window. “It’ll take them a couple of minutes to get over here.”

Mickey checked out the empty room we were in. “You disable the elevators?”

“Of course I did,” the silhouette answered derisively. “Who’s your friend?”

I propped myself up on my elbows. There was Mickey, standing next to someone with a beaklike-nose and a tattoo reading “They/Them, Please” on their bicep, Altsoba. Behind them was a shorter man with leathery brown skin.

“I’m Veronica.” Altsoba shot Micky a meaningful look, to his apparent embarrassment, and the man chuckled. “And _you_ ,” I fixed Mickey with a stormy glare, “have some explaining to do.”

Finally, I was lent a hand by Altsoba, their skin rough and calloused against mine as they pulled me to my feet. “After we get out of here, I promise.” They tossed a card onto the abandoned net and turned to the others. “Alright folks. The cops are coming up the main staircase, so we’re going to take the fire escape down. Mickey, try not to give out on us. It’s going to be a long run.” He in assent. Altsoba seemed to be the leader of whatever group this was, and they took point during our flight from the empty room.

The fire escape gave us an advantage, but even still, by the time we got to the street another two squad cars had arrived. Each carried a pair of policemen, bringing the number of pursuers up to five. Roberto- the leathery-skinned man- was instructed to hold them off. I’m not sure how one abnormally short Hispanic man was able to hold off five police officers while we ran, but there were a series of pops, a few rapid gunfire, and a good deal of shouting. Roberto was right behind us again, his dark coat flapping open to reveal what looked like a magic-for-beginners kit mixed with a set of questionably legal homemade fireworks. He grinned at me, displaying several gold teeth before I turned back around.

  
•• •• ••

The four of us ran in a long, twisted path for a while, trying to shake off our tail, before finally ducking under a tarp a tarp that was hanging off of a building that looked like it had been abandoned halfway through construction.

“Where are-” I began to whisper, but Altsoba cut me off with a finger to their lips,

“Not now,” they mouthed.

And so it was in silence that we pieced our way through the skeleton building, save for Mickey’s heavy wheezing, stopping at a seemingly random point. Roberto knelt and shifted another dusty tarp, revealing a trapdoor that probably led to the basement. It cracked open after he knocked a long, complicated rhythm onto it.

“One at a time, s’il te plaît,” came a soft voice from the darkness.

Altsoba toed the door the rest of the way open and jumped down, sealing it quietly shut behind them. A few minutes later, the door opened again and Roberto slid down with a final nod to Mickey and I.

“Look, Verde,” Mickey whispered to me, taking advantage of our solitude. I was glad to hear that his breathing had evened out. “I really didn’t mean for you to get mixed up with this.”

“Damn better be.”

He looked at me like he did on the rooftop, full of regret. “You’ll get an explanation soon, I promise.”

That’s what people seemed to be saying. I turned to tell him this, but the trapdoor had opened once again and he was leaving me with nothing but the shadow of a grin.

The wait seemed longer that time, but it was probably just because I was alone. Every passing car seemed to echo. When the door finally opened for me, I had no idea what to expect. Tentatively, I hopped down into the abyss. It was, I could see after my eyes adjusted to the dimness, a sort of antechamber. One wall was completely covered with flickering electrical equipment. Standing in the corner was a pretty blonde girl with sunglasses and a smattering of freckles. On the wall beside her was a lightswitch, and, realizing what the sunglasses were for, I squeezed my eyes shut. Not a moment too soon, because she switched on the single industrial bulb hanging naked from the ceiling and flooded the room with light.

“You got that quicker than your friend, he still forgets about it.” Her voice was soft and accented. It didn’t quite suit her severe haircut and huge leather coat. “You’re Veronica Klopp? Or do you go by Verde? That’s what Mickey always calls you.”

I made a face. “Definitely not Verde, whatever Mickey says. But yes, I am Veronica. Are you, uh, security? Or something?”

Her nose scrunched up when she smiled. “Just a doorman. I’m Jay brooks, by the way. At your service.” She offered a hand clad in a fingerless glove. Bemused, I shook it- handshakes were an uncommon gesture nowadays.

“Uh… Thanks.” Jay had one of those contagious smiles, and I found myself sharing it.

“Since you’re verified now, I can let you through. Dinner should be on soon, so be polite. Salut, Veronica.”

During our conversation, she’d been standing on top of yet another trapdoor, which she now unlocked and opened with the key hanging around her neck. I looked down into another dark hole and sighed, then resigned myself to mounting the ladder and starting my descent. There was a much farther drop than it was to the antechamber. I assumed that it led to a deep sub-basement or bunker of sorts.

At the bottom, only few feet in front of me in the well-like chasm, was a locked door. The square of light above me dissappeared with a thump when Jay saw that I had reached the bottom, and I was suddenly plunged into total darkness.

I pounded on the door until a small rectangle of light appeared at eye level. A pair of steel blue eyes peered out. Their owner turned away without a word, giving me a view of straw-colored hair.

“This her?”

Mickey’s eyes came then, far warmer, and the door was opened immediately. I was still blinking in the sudden onslaught of light when I was engulfed in a huge hug, eliciting a wolf-whistle from someone farther in the.

Mickey ignored whoever it was and pulled away long enough on the forehead. “You okay, Verde? Jay didn’t flash-blind you, did she? Sorry, she likes to do that.”

I squirmed halfheartedly in his arms. “No, I’m fine, Micks. I’m just being slowly crushed by a boa constrictor, is all.”

Abashed, he stepped away, giving me a proper view of the room. Bigger than Jay’s antechamber, but not cavernous, it has a fireplace on one wall- not uncommon, even this far underground- and bunks carved into another. There was a scuffed wooden table in the middle of the room, around which sat a jumble of people as varied as the chairs they sat on. I recognized Altsoba and Roberto, and someone who looked like they could be the owner of the cold blue eyes.

“Veronica! You survived Jay! Sorry if she was a bit short with you, she doesn’t like strangers coming in.” Altsoba had gotten up and made their way over to us. Their warm reddish complexion was thrown into stark shadow by the firelight.

“Not at all. She was nice.” Though I tried not to, I leaned into Mickey’s side. Altsoba, though kind, was an imposing figure, with their sharp black eyes and peppery hair pulled into a long, straight braid.

“You must be something special,” they smiled gently. “Anyways, let’s get introductions out of the way.” They pointed to a person reading cross-legged on the hearth, “That’s Quy. Xe’s Vietnamese and will not hesitate to punch you in the face if you make an Asian joke about xer.”

Quy glanced up from xer book and winked at me, smiling roguishly.

“That’s Nancy helping Roberto with the soup,” they nodded at a rotund black woman with miles of cornrows and a ladle as she walked out of a side room. She smiled sweetly in greeting. “You’ve met Jay, I’m Altsoba, Roberto and Mickey you know, and that’s Liz-Beth,” they gestured at the room’s final occupant, the one with straw-blonde hair and metal eyes. “Her brother Eric is out on a scouting run, but he should be back for dinner.” Liz-Beth nodded coolly towards me and turned back to her task of setting the table.

Mickey bumped shoulders with and and directed my attention to a small bust on the mantle. “And that’s John. Eric found him at a flea market.”

“It’s nice to meet you all,” I hesitated, and Nancy hummed in response, “And Mickey, that’s a statue of Marie de Antoinette.” I shifted uncomfortably. “So, uh. Sorry, but what do you all do? In general, I mean. Because I’m possibly going into shock here, or at least on the verge of panic.”

Altsoba didn’t answer, only clapped my shoulder with a wry twist of their mouth and went to help Liz-Beth with the silverware. It was Nancy who handed off her ladle to Roberto and came up to me, giving me a kiss on both cheeks in proper greeting.

“Nous sommes les anarchists, miel.”

Breathing suddenly became a distant concept as everything froze. Mickey took my hand in one of his and squeezed, but he didn’t elaborate or even meet my eyes when I looked at him. So this was what he had been doing, in the time between school and when he came home. In secret, and in silence.

The whole room, in fact, seemed to be holding its breath, waiting to see what I would say.

“O-oh…” I choked, eyes probably wide enough that the whites all the way around. These were the anarchists that the councilmen had spoken of.

Quy finally cut through the tension, easily as if xe hadn’t noticed it at all. Carefully marking xer page and stretching like a cat, xe said, “Welcome to the family.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some general stuff from the chapter:
> 
> -Nancy is Cajun and Jay is French-Canadien. Nancy kissed Veronica's cheeks as a "proper greeting," also known as "a bis" because that's how the French often greet friends and family. 
> 
> "S'il te plaît" means please  
> "Nous sommes les anarchistes, miel" means We are the anarchists, honey.
> 
> -Just in case anyone doesn't know, "xe" and "xer" are nonbinary pronouns pronounced like "ze" and "zer"


	5. The Blindsided Veronica is Introduced to the Family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's not late if I never said that there was an update schedule. Right? Honestly, I've had this typed for a week and I just haven't uploaded it. Whoops. Anyways, more shenanigans abound. Mickey's in the doghouse.

“I’m really, _really_  sorry that I got you mixed up in all of this, Verde. I’ve been meaning to tell you about it, but how do you even say-”

I cut him off with a hand. “That’s alright. I’m not even going to try to process this right now, and hopefully put it off for as long as is physically possible. Okay?” My voice sounded unnaturally high, even to my own ears.

Mickey tried to keep apologizing until I physically put my hand over his mouth and shushed him aloud.

Quy giggled.“I like you. You deal with shit in unhealthy ways.”

“Shut up, Quy, She’s been through a lot today,” Liz-Beth snapped.

Xe shrugged. “I’m just saying, I can get behind that.”

Altsoba opened their mouth to halt the beginnings of the squabble but was distracted by the static crackle of the walky-talky next to John, that is, the bust of Marie de Antoinette. They picked it up and fiddled with the antenna, frowning. They smacked it on the table a few times and a garbled voice came through the static; another good whack clarified it to a fuzzy French accent.

“Eric is here. Do you want me to send him in?”

“Sure,” Altsoba replied, and in the corner of my eye I saw Liz-Beth let out a quiet breath. “And come on down yourself, we’re getting ready to eat.”

There was a pause, and then, “Alright. See you in a mo’.”

A series of pounds rattled the door only seconds later, before the walky-talky had even been placed back on the mantle. If I didn’t know any better (I didn’t) I would say that Eric had slid down the ladder instead of using the rungs like a sane person.

Liz-Beth went to answer it and in breezed a man who looked almost exactly like her, although he had a significant amount more metal gleaming in his face. The two of them spoke in hushed tones for a for a few minutes by the door, during which time Mickey guided me to the table, where we sat in a swiveling office chair and the arm of a plush blue velvet loveseat respectively. Eventually, Eric meandered over and dropped into a wicker patio chair across from me. There was sandy stubble on his cheeks that glinted in the firelight almost as much as the lip ring he was playing with.

“Hey, Mickey, your girlfriend’s here!”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Mickey’s voice cracked in that high way he hated and a warm blush crawled from under his collar. I laughed at about the same time that Eric did.

“Partner, significant other, whatever,” Eric shrugged, the easy smile never leaving his face. This conversation was clearly an old one.

Mickey huffed, blush climbing ever so slightly higher. “Whatever yourself.”

“Whatever,” Eric agreed.

Before either could say anything more, Roberto heaved the big cast-iron soup pot onto the table, making the wobbly legs creak and adding another black burnmark to a stormcloud of others. He hopped onto a stool at the foot of the table without a word, which seemed to be the signal for all of the others to congregate around the table. Altsoba sat across from Roberto at the head of the table, and everyone else fell in around them. Bowls were passed forward to Nancy to be filled with the thick, spicy-smelling soup, and there were scattered murmurings of grace and thanks to various deities from different people.

One chair,however, remained conspicuously empty. Jay, despite what she had promised Altsoba, was nowhere to be seen. A bowl of soup sat ready for her, and when hunks of bread were passed out, one was left by her place. Nobody said anything about her absence, although it seemed like everyone’s gazes pointedly avoided the seat. It seemed like this was a common occurrence. Even after the last drops of soup had been sopped up by bread crusts, Jay had failed to show. Altsoba sighed resignedly.

“I guess I had better bring the doorman her dinner then,” they announced with a strained smile.

I looked at Mickey in question, but he only shook his head. “Don’t ask about it,” he whispered.

A short while later, Altsoba returned, empty handed, and conversation picked up like nothing had happened.

** ** **

After dinner, I was asked if I wanted more explanation as to the the so-called anarchy that the strange family that this was carried out, but I said that I needed more time.

Mickey had tried to protest, saying that I would feel better if I understood, but Altsoba had nodded like they understood. In all honesty, Mickey was probably right; he tended to know my mind better than I did myself, but the events of the day were catching up to me now that the adrenaline had faded. My chest felt like there was a thick elastic band around it.

I suppose that, at the end of the day, I knew Mickey pretty well too. Whatever wild involvements he had been keeping from me.

Eventually, it seemed like it was time for sleep. Quy had climbed up to xer bunk with xer book just after dinner, and others had followed over time until it was only Roberto, Altsoba, Mickey and I sitting at the table. I was drop-dead tired myself, but I had no idea what I was supposed to do with myself- everyone had their own places, even Mickey, and I was almost certain that he had never stayed the night here before, even dinner was negligible.

The military-style bunks were essentially just six-foot rectangles cut a few feet into the painted cement wall, five rows of four opposite the fire. Most were either occupied or being used as extra shelving space, but there were four or five still empty.

Mickey must have noticed me pulling loose threads out of the upholstery of my slowly swiveling chair, because he asked, “Do you want to go to bed?”

I nodded mutely, and he led me to one of the empty bunks, handing me a pillow and a few blankets from the shelves before grabbing some for himself. The fire was burning down to embers, leaving the dimly flickering overheads as the only source of light, and it was cold this far underground. Winter’s fingers were worming their way into the cracks and crevices of the city this time of year.

While he made up a bunk for himself, I waited uncomfortably. It was only when he had maneuvered himself into the space that I could get to the bunk right below his. I really wanted to talk with him, to calm my nerves, but Altsoba and Roberto were still sitting in silence, and I wasn’t used to having any sort of important conversation with Mickey without the absolute privacy of the roof.

As I tried to contort myself into a comfortable enough position to fall asleep, I thought that that was just one of many things that would be changed, possibly forever.


End file.
